Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older PCs
Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older PCs
arstechnica.com
Windows 11 24H2 goes from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some older PCs
167 comments
-
-
OH NO anyway.
-
Maybe this will convince more people to switch to linux.
-
Issue is, a lot of people still using Windows, and Linux pro-audio is still questionable at best (lack of drivers, etc.).
-
Could be. If you're running a core 2 duo I am fairly certain Linux will run markedly faster than Windows 10+...
-
-
I'll be sure to inform my whole company and I am sure they will be on board
-
That's not a guarantee on the Linux world either, but at least you do have the option of recompiling your distro to not use those options.
There's talks from some distros to start dropping support for such old CPUs because it's holding back newer CPUs that could run even faster by using those instructions.
-
Just ordered a system76 laptop, can't wait to use it!
-
-
-
At this point Microsoft should just be buying me the computer since they make all their money on collecting my data
-
In modern x86 CPUs, POPCNT is implemented as part of the SSE4 instruction set. For Intel's chips, it was added as part of SSE4.2 in the original first-generation Core architecture, codenamed Nehalem. In AMD's processors, it's included in SSE4a, first used in Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron CPUs based on the K10 architecture. These architectures date back to 2008 and 2007, respectively.
That effectively bars mid-2000s Intel Core 2 Duo systems and early Athlon 64-era PCs from booting Windows 11 at all, not that they officially supported it in the first place. This means the change should mainly affect retro-computing enthusiasts who spend their days making YouTube videos in the "we installed Windows 11 on a potato, let's see how it runs" genre rather than users of actual systems.
You can check if your CPU has SSE 4.2(Intel) or 4a(AMD) but it sounds like unless you're running some real old stuff you shouldn't have to worry.
-
do hack to make software run on unsupported hardware
software stops working with update
surprised pikachu
“this is why i switched to linux” no shut up lol. this is not an issue for any average user and if you had the ability to hack the TPM requirements you have the ability to fix your borked install. this issue affects no one else. 🙂🙂🙂
-
No, the issue is that Microsoft officially supports only two versions of Windows. And support of the older one is ending next year. They are forcing users that are using perfectly capable hardware to artificially switch to - for many - needless new hardware.
-
Yes, this is bad, and should be called out as such.
However, tweaking the software to run against the intent of Microsoft is still just asking for pain. Versus voting with your feet, so to speak, and saying "fine, Microsoft, if that's how you want to play it, then I'm going elsewhere". Of course the number of people doing that will be negligible so as not to make a difference, but it's better than forcing Windows 11 to run against Microsoft's intent. That's just asking for a fight that you won't win.
-
In order for this update to have any effect on you you would have had to have failed to upgrade your computer for basically 20 years in a row. I don't think it's unreasonable that support for older processors is dropped
-
There is a service called 0patch that offers microcode patching for EoL windows versions, for about 30 bucks a year I'm still getting updates for my Win7 gaming rig. Never had an exploit or hijacking and I pirate quite a bit on that PC.
Plan on getting one for my Win10 daily driver next year.
And as for trust: Microsoft has awarded 0patch for several zero day exploits, and have used their patches in official releases before so not only are they trustworthy, they are literally faster at finding exploits than MS themselves.
Full disclosure: No relationship with the company other than as a happy paying customer.
-
edit: pls see jj4211s comment for an actual rebuttal. the below is just me being curious and probably ill-informed. i do appreciate your help if you are feeling helpful tho.
please identify the material changes that come with an end of support that force users to artificially switch.
in general i am entirely on the position against ms, but i genuinely do not see any concrete evidence of a “force”; ms’s own lifecycle policy even notes that products will continue to get “security and non-security updates.”
again i am anti-corporate, but i’d very much like to be accurate in my criticism, so any insight into the forces at play are appreciated 🙂
-
-
“this is why i switched to linux” no shut up lol.
This is why I switched to Linux.
-
You lot think that the solution to everything is Linux except you have absolutely no understanding of corporate IT. It's hilarious. No wait, it's annoying.
-
-
I agree with you, but did you read the article? This is about a specific CPU instruction, not TPMs.
In modern x86 CPUs, POPCNT is implemented as part of the SSE4 instruction set. For Intel's chips, it was added as part of SSE4.2 in the original first-generation Core architecture, codenamed Nehalem. In AMD's processors, it's included in SSE4a, first used in Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron CPUs based on the K10 architecture. These architectures date back to 2008 and 2007, respectively.
-
First generation Core i# line, the Core name itself goes back 2 gens before that.
-
yeah i did read the article. to clarify for anyone confused, folks are already bypassing the TPM requirement to get these windows installs working in the first place. the POPCNT instruction issue is only affecting installs that are already using this workaround to force W11 to run on a device it doesn’t want to work on.
-
-
"Hack" the TPM. Ha!
-
-
Itt: Use Linux Spam. This is not feasible for most users. Not all applicatopns are posted to Linux and some explicitly do not work. In particular for people that play games socially this just does not work. That being said they are unaffected by this change.
-
Seems like this is a constant spam on Lemmy and it’s starting to drive me away from the platform. So much Linux spam.
-
The Linux proselytizing combined with the rabid impractical political hive mind have combined to slowly take my usage of Lemmy from "increasing and replacing Reddit time" to "flattened out, going back to Reddit a bit" and now it's moving solidly into the territory of "definitely using and visiting Lemmy less, spending more time back on Reddit".
This platform has so much potential, but the community sucks. Which is saying something, given that the chief comparison is the reddit community.
-
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to make something that filtered out all posts/comments containing the word "Linux", what software do you use to interact with Lemmy?
-
-
You just described this entire site.
-
At this point the only games that don’t work on Linux are games using kernel level anti-cheats, and these are the largest games out there.
If you don’t play any of those games then your game most likely works just fine on Linux.
-
This is simply not true. I recently tried Linux for gaming after several years because I read that Valve made some great progress. Installed Crusader Kings III and didn't get Paradox Launcher to run which is necessary for any DLC.
This was literally the first game I installed from my huge library and it simpl didn't work so I had to do two hours of research, trial and error and reading error logs to conclude that I wasn't able to solve this problem.
This is the exact reason why I use Windows for gaming. It simply works 99 % of the time. And I don't have the time to troubleshoot my games all the time.
-
-
I'm finding out that particularly complex modding can be a bit of a pain as well, but thats a more niche category than gaming in general
(I'm having a TERRIBLE time trying to get Bannerlord Script Extender to work on my Steamdeck)
-
This isn't even true all the time anymore, helldivers 2 has a kernel anti cheat on windows but runs fine under proton!
-
Which is ridiculous because unlike windows, you don't NEED kernel level access in linux to know someone is screwing with memory but none of the anti-cheat devs are interested in making a whole separate anti cheat for the 2% of linux users.
If you guys want that, you need to write it yourself and give it to the game companies free, that's the only way we are getting multiplayer online games in Linux.
-
-
I'd suggest Arch Linux, btw. 😜
Just kidding, Debian.
-
I've been trying to switch to linux on my daily driver for years, and every time I come to a critical issue, I can't find useful help for it anywhere on the web and I give up and try again next year.
And this isn't a skill issue, I'm a 30 year greybeard IT vet that has administered to linux servers since the late 90s. Linux is simply not ready for daily use by your average computer user, and that's mainly the fault of its fucktastically fragmented environment designed by insular egotists.
And don't even get me fucking started on the elitism of people who actually respond to help requests with instructions to read several hundred pages of documents before they'll even tell you what's wrong with your question.
-
What average users would need to convert is access to sympathetic and patient support... what they get is obtuse gatekeepers. People who on the one hand think that everyone should use Linux but on the other hand insist that using it means that you're hyper intelligent, and by extension requires you to be.
-
the gnu kind communication guidelines helped chill this for a short while, but it's back even in #emacs on libera.chat
-
-
So, we just gotta make people play games in non social ways
-
Sudo switch to linux
-
May I ask - why is anyone bothering to install Windows 11 on old hardware in the first place?
Old hardware is better for Linux. Either install Linux or you can get used to having your old hardware be used as a paperweight.
-
In this context an unsupported cpu would be an i7 7700K for example. Hardly e-waste and can perform quite well..
-
Those aren't supported but they're not affected by this specific change. The latest chips that won't be able to boot are Core 2 Duo and the Athlon X2 chips that predated AMD Phenom. Old old.
-
Laughs in 3770k just until a few months ago
-
7700K supports popcnt.
-
I finally upgraded from a 3rd gen i7 to a 6th gen i7. There was no actual performance difference besides my gpu vram getting hotter, I just did it because the motherboard wasn't as shit. I'm sure the difference between a 6th gen i7 and an 8th gen i7 is equally unnoticeable. I didn't want to ever boot Windows again anyway.
Edit: huh, I'm intrigued by the downvotes. Is it because I used the wording "no actual performance difference" rather than providing benchmarks and proof? Is it because computer technology isn't improving at the rate it used to and people are in denial and/or easily triggered about it? Or maybe because I'm "probably a troll" based on my username?
-
-
Or just... Stay on Windows 10? There's nothing wrong with it compared to Windows 11 (though Linux is usually a better choice).
-
Because people will click on the YouTube video you make trying it.
-
Be me
Teach intro to it-support/devops Course is relatively cheap for the school, as we only use the stuff that the IT dept has obsoleted
Currently getting 4th gen core i7 machines Life is good, every student has a few i7 machines for clients (win 10) and windows server
Microsoft announces end of life for win 10 Hate win 11, but if we must...
MFW Microsoft announces the requirement of CPUs 4 gens newer than the newest machines we're receiving. And I now have to tell my boss that the otherwise cheap course, with not enough students otherwise, will need an investment of at least 18 new desktop machinesAnybody hiring?
-
-
I went to Linux for all private use years ago. And man - I wish so very hard I could simply switch to a non win-native CAD at the job.
-
Ditto. Decade & a half but video games rather in the beginning.
-
CAD is one of those hold-out areas for windows which is actually kinda strange because when it comes to non-CAD 3D software a lot of the big names are UNIX-native and got ported to windows at some point: Houdini, Maya and Blender all got their start on IRIX and run perfectly fine on Linux, 3dsmax... well, Autodesk. Somehow they started out writing their software for DOS and became dominant in the CAD market despite that.
Speaking of Blender did recently get its feet wet with some CADish constraint modelling but I'm sure it's nowhere close to where it's usable for engineers. If you're an artist modelling something mechanical it's damn useful, though, and it might be sufficient for some light hobby usage, that is, to feed a 3d printer.
-
Even within the CAD space, I was running CATIA natively years ago under Linux.
-
-
Ditto. Seems like everyone uses AutoDesk or Bentley. Although I use them both regularly, they both fail pretty hard in some areas. Now there's talk about BricsCAD. I've got my reasons to hate it that I don't want to get into, but it is platform independent (as every piece of professional software should be). It'll run on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
-
-
It's penguin time
-
I would not count on all major distros maintaining support for processors as old as Core 2 forever.
RHEL 9 in particular (and by extension CentOS Steam, Alma, Rocky) already dropped support for all of the processors affected by this breakage since 2022.
Linux systems often group these CPU feature set generations into levels, where "x86-64-v2" requires SSE4 and POPCNT (Nehalem/2008 and newer) and "x86-64-v3" requires AVX2 (Haswell/2013 and newer).
Ubuntu and Fedora are already evaluating optimized package builds for both v2 and v3 but haven't announced any plans to drop baseline x86-64 yet; I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen within the next two years. Debian is a relatively safer bet for old hardware.
-
That's why we have the freedom to create different distros.
-
Good to know
-
-
-
Linux Linux Linux Linux Linux Linux Linux
-
With all due respect, that sounds very much like what something unsupported would do.
-
sudo dnf install fedora-39-workstation-edition
-
After a recent update, Fedora won't even boot to grub for me. Linux has some stability issues
-
Linux doesn't, fedora might. Just use a more stable distro like Debian
-
I think Fedora has some issues. I just spent a couple of weeks with Fedora again after a few years of ignoring it. While it didn't refuse to boot for me, after the last update things that were working stopped working and no amount of google could fix them. So back to Linux Mint again.
Fedora has never worked well for me since RedHat 5. It always has a failure at some point. Obviously, YMMV!
-
-
2025 will likely be way more the year of massive e-waste than the "Year of the Linux Desktop (TM)" - but I still think it is in the realm of possible that Linux market share close to doubles into the 5 to 8 percent range.
While I already regularly use Ubuntu and Ubuntu Touch for my "infotainment" desktops, laptops and tablets - I have 3 desktops in my studio that run Windows 10 that work great for my pro audio work needs, none of which qualify for Windows 11 according to MS's "PC Health Check" app. So I've been investigating running Ubuntu Studio dual booting on one of my machines as a possible way of keeping these boxes going after Win 10 stops getting security updates. Some things look promising, but given I was not able to get the available kernel module device driver to build for my Merging Anubis (which is my main audio interface for my mastering studio) I will likely still need to get a Win 11 box in order to be able to continue my current work flow.
-
Or the year of grand piracy. "Someone I met" told me that while it is nearly impossible to purchase a legit copy, Windows 10 IoT LTSC is going to be supported until 2032. It is truly Windows as its meant to be without tons of bloat, telemetry, ads, and the option to decline feature updates. Scripts readily available on the web to activate the product, runs so cleanly and efficiently.
-
To me, this gives off the same sort of energy as "Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric system."
Getting an OS from questionable sources that MS is almost certain to be aware is not a legit copy and relying on their goodwill to in order to avoid either getting new hardware or switching to a more reliable and usually monetarily free OS.
Maybe it's that I've not been running Windows for over a decade but, I just don't get it. You're presumably going to be entrusting the OS with a Steam install and other potentially sensitive things.
-
-
I too do pro audio work. I don't like Windows and love Linux and have several laptops running Linux Mint, but I don't think Linux is quite where I want it to be for me to switch fully for audio work. So I consider using Windows just an occupational hazard of sorts for now.
-
My wife does pro audio work as well. We both got fed up of the pure trash quality of MS's updates (offline is not an option as remote sessions are sometimes needed). It got so bad that she had to comp a full session due to driver issues. So, despite loathing Apple, we bit the bullet and got a MacMini from Costco. Not quite Linux but it is unix- like and extremely stable.
For Linux, maybe check out Ardour, if you haven't yet.
-
for laptops, linux is king. but many use cases still don't work yet.
and since a desktop needs to be able to do so much more, it's going to be a long-ass time before i can switch.
already learning to use it though, so the switch will be as smooth as possible.
-
-
One use case that I think is going to make more people able to adopt Linux in the next couple years is mechanical CAD. FreeCAD is approaching a 1.0 release that is going to be actually adoptable, which I think may free up some folks to switch from Fusion360's drawbackware tier.
-
Look into the service: 0patch, they can keep your EoL win10 machines safe.
For about $30 a year I still get patches for my Win7 gaming rig
-
-
-
It's not working because W11 is using a CPU instruction that doesn't exist in older processors.
And by older, I don't mean Pre-Zen or Intel 5XXX... I mean OG AMD Athlon and Intel Core 2 Duo. If you're trying to run on a CPU from 2008, that's on you. These were never supported - hence the title.
The only reason this was discovered was because some YTers make videos of running W10/11 on super old computers.
-
-
Almost like I still have no reason to get a secure boot machine!
-
-
My problem is I pretty much only use my PC for games. I don't want only ~60% of what's out there, I want to be able to run whatever game I want as it's literally all I use the device for...
I hate Microsuck but they have a stranglehold on that part of the market :(
-
-
-
This is the best summary I could come up with:
That's apparently changing a bit in Windows 11's 24H2 update, which Microsoft began testing earlier this month.
According to posts from a user named Bob Pony on X, formerly Twitter, the latest Windows 11 builds refuse to boot on older processors that don't support a relatively obscure instruction called "POPCNT."
For Intel's chips, it was added as part of SSE4.2 in the original first-generation Core architecture, codenamed Nehalem.
That effectively bars mid-2000s Intel Core 2 Duo systems and early Athlon 64-era PCs from booting Windows 11 at all, not that they officially supported it in the first place.
This means the change should mainly affect retro-computing enthusiasts who spend their days making YouTube videos in the "we installed Windows 11 on a potato, let's see how it runs" genre rather than users of actual systems.
No CPU manufacturer is including stuff like POPCNT or MBEC in their marketing materials, but modern Windows support is increasingly dictated by these kinds of features.
The original article contains 498 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
-
If you think about it. Rhel already killed of the use of older CPUs by requiring x86-64-v2 for rhel 9 and up. If you got x86-64-v1 you get a kernel panic and can not even boot the system. Dont get me wrong I love linux and use it anywhere I can.
-
There is a difference between intel core processors and processors > whatever is 'needed' for w11 (10th gen?). Dont get me wrong, im ok with this change. A 2006 pc shouldnt run w11..
-
shouldnt run imo is wrong. a PC from 2006 is more then capable of running windows 11 without issue. maiby need a bit of a ram upgrade but for some light work is fine. getting all the latest security updates is also a good thing with windows. the choice should be made by the end user if their device is powerful enough to run win11.
-
I think W11 should ideally run fine on a 2006 PC, but I don't think there's any reason to expect a computer that old to continue to get support. Still would have been annoyed if they had nixxed booting 4th gen or 6th gen, but that would be my fault for running W11 on devices without official support to begin with.
-
-
-
So wait, doesn't the naming for their builds based on the year and whether the first half, or second half, of the year? How would they have a 24H2 if we're only in February of 2024?
-
-
167 comments
It'd ultimately be better for everyone if no PCs could boot windows 11.
This comment brought to you by Microsoft Edge™
I have a laptop that runs Win11. I have had no issues with it since I did the upgrade when it first came out and as far a Microsoft products go, it's OK. But with the addition of the AI, I know at some point it will piss me off and I will wipe it and chose a distro to take it's place.
I'm retired now, and I no longer really need the Fusion360 install that one customer requested I use for their designs nor do I play games beyond a little mahjongg and solitaire in the evenings if I feel the need.
Windows is merely a tool and a means to an end. It's NOT the end in itself. Use the tool you want/need to and feel the best with and just get on with the job.......